Auto-completion for user interface design

ABSTRACT

Techniques for automatically completing a partially completed UI design created by a user are described. A UI query including attributes of UI components in the partially completed UI design is created. Example designs with similar UI components are identified. UI components of one such design example are displayed to automatically complete the partially completed UI design (also called an “auto-complete suggestion”). The user can systematically navigate the design examples and accept auto-completed suggestions to include into the partially complete UI design.

CROSS-REFERENCE To RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional PatentApplication No. 61/624,173, entitled “Auto-Completion for User InterfaceDesign,” filed on Apr. 13, 2012, which is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention generally relates to the field of user interfaces, inparticular to generating content for user interfaces.

BACKGROUND

Many user interface (UI) design applications have been developed forusers to create UI designs. To help users to quickly create UI designs,many UI design applications allow the users to edit or customizeexisting UI examples in order to create their own. However, due to thelarge volume of existing design examples (e.g., billions of web pages),it is difficult for the users to find desirable UI designs in the designexamples. Currently, there is no effective technique for a user toeffectively and easily leverage existing design examples to create theirown UI designs.

SUMMARY

Embodiments of the present disclosure include methods (and correspondingsystems and computer program products) for automatically completing apartially completed user interface design created by a designer.

In one aspect, a command is received to automatically generate acomplete design from an incomplete UI design that includes a first UIcomponent. A plurality of example designs are identified that contain asecond UI component similar to the first, and a third UI component fromthe example design is provided for display in the incomplete UI design.Scrollbars are provided for selection of one of the plurality of exampledesigns and the third component is incorporated with the incompletedesign upon user confirmation.

In another aspect, a combination score categorizing similarity betweenexample designs is used to group the example designs.

In still another aspect, the example designs are grouped based onproperties including layout style, background style, background color,font size, and font style.

In a further aspect, an incomplete UI includes a first set of UIcomponents. A plurality of example designs is identified, each with asecond set of UI components that are similar to the first set, and anadditional UI component. A corresponding transformation cost iscalculated for each of the design examples. The design examples arepresented and user controls provided whereby a user selects and confirmsan additional component to incorporate with the incomplete UI design.

In yet another aspect, the transformation cost comprises contributionsfrom one or more of the following factors: a cost associated with addinga UI component, a cost associated with deleting a UI component, a costassociated with translating a UI component, and a cost associated withscaling a UI component.

A related method receives a command to automatically generate a designfor an incomplete UI design comprising a user-selected component. Adesign example including a corresponding UI component and a recommendedUI component is identified, and the recommended UI component is providedfor display in the incomplete UI design.

In one aspect of the related method, differences between text and imagesin the user-selected and corresponding UI components do not contributeto the transformation cost. In another aspect, text and images in therecommended UI component are replaced by default text and images whenprovided for display.

Another related method determines attributes of UI components in aplurality of design examples, receives a query for automaticallygenerating a design for the incomplete UI, the query includinginformation about a first set of UI components of the incomplete UI, andidentifies a design example that has a second set of UI components,similar to the first set of UI components, and also has a third UIcomponent for proposed inclusion in the incomplete UI design.

System elements identify and harvest the design examples, and group thembased on common characteristics.

In yet another aspect, a partially completed UI is compared to a corpusof examples and a subset of the examples is selected based on asimilarity between the partially completed UI and the UI of each exampleselected for the subset. UI components present in one or more of theexamples that do not correspond to a component in the partiallycompleted UI are ranked based on the number of examples that contain acomparable component (e.g., one that is identical, or substantially thesame). For example, if five examples are identified as similar to thepartially completed UI, and four of them contain a radio-button in thetop-right hand corner, then such a radio-button component will be highlyranked. In contrast, a text box which only appears at the bottom of oneof the examples will be lowly ranked. Highly ranked components arefavored over lower ranked components for presentation to the user asauto-complete options. For example, the user may be presented with thehighest ranked component for inclusion and be given the option to insertit, move on to the next highest ranked suggestion, or continue to addcomponents manually.

In a related aspect, complete UI designs are ranked and presented to theuser based on a number of UIs in the example corpus that havesubstantially the same components in substantially identical positions.

In yet a further aspect, a user is provided with controls to select aportion of an incomplete UI and a comparison is made between theselected UI portion and corresponding UI portions from the examplecorpus (e.g., portions in example UIs with the same co-ordinates as theselected portion). Candidate components for inclusion in the UI portionare presented to the user based on the comparison with correspondingportions in the example corpus. In this way, a user can base differentportions of a UI on different example UIs from the example corpus,thereby enabling easy combination of designs and allowing greatercreativity.

The features and advantages described in the specification are not allinclusive and, in particular, many additional features and advantageswill be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of thedrawings and specification. Moreover, it should be noted that thelanguage used in the specification has been principally selected forreadability and instructional purposes, and may not have been selectedto delineate or circumscribe the disclosed subject matter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a high-level block diagram of a computing environmentaccording to one embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a high-level block diagram illustrating an example of acomputer for use in the computing environment shown in FIG. 1 accordingto one embodiment.

FIG. 3A is a high-level block diagram illustrating modules within a UIdesign application shown in FIG. 1 according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3B is a high-level block diagram illustrating modules within aserver shown in FIG. 1 according to one embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a process for automatically completinga partially completed UI design created by a designer, according to oneembodiment.

FIGS. 5A through 5G are diagrams illustrating displays of the UI designapplication shown in FIG. 1, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a structure of grouped design examples,according to one embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flow-chart illustrating a method for automaticallycompleting a UI design, according to one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The figures and the following description describe certain embodimentsby way of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readilyrecognize from the following description that alternative embodiments ofthe structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed withoutdeparting from the principles described herein. Reference will now bemade in detail to several embodiments, examples of which are illustratedin the accompanying figures. It is noted that wherever practicablesimilar or like reference numbers may be used in the figures and mayindicate similar or like functionality.

System Environment

FIG. 1 is a high-level block diagram that illustrates a computingenvironment 100 for enabling a user to efficiently create a UI design byautomatically completing a partially completed UI design created by theuser using design examples and enabling the user to incorporatedesirable designs from the design examples into the UI design. As shown,the computing environment 100 includes a client 110, a server 120, and aweb server 130, all connected through a network 140. There can be otherentities in the computing environment 100.

The client 110 is an electronic device that can communicate with theserver 120 through the network 140. In one embodiment, the client 110 isa conventional computer system executing, for example, a MicrosoftWindows-compatible operating system (OS), Apple OS X, and/or a Linuxdistribution. In another embodiment, the client 110 is a mobile devicesuch as a smart phone or a tablet computer executing, for example, aGOOGLE ANDROID operating system (OS). As shown, the client 110 includesa UI design application 115.

The UI design application 115 is a software program intended to be usedby a user (also called the “designer”) to create UI designs such as webpages and applications (or apps). A UI design is a visual presentationof digital information. A UI design includes one or more components(also called “UI components”) such as regions, texts, images, andbuttons. A UI component itself may include one or more UI components.The former is called the parent UI component and the latter are calledthe children UI components. For example, a region (the parent UIcomponent) may include multiple buttons (the children UI components).The arrangement of UI components within a UI (or a parent UI component)is called the layout of that UI. Each UI component has attributes thatcollectively define the display of the UI component in the UI design itbelongs to. Example attributes include location, length, height, size,type, background color, font, semantic information and layout.

The UI design application 115 provides an auto-completion feature thatautomatically completes a partially completed UI design created by adesigner. As the designer freely lays out UI components on an editingwindow (also called a “canvas”), the UI design application 115automatically suggests the rest of the UI design (also called the“alto-complete suggestions”) by rendering a suggested design on thecanvas along with the UI components added by the designer. The designercan either ignore the suggested layout and keep finishing the design, oraccept the suggested design as a part of the UI design. In addition, theauto-completion feature suggests additional alternative designs for thepartially completed UI design by enabling the designer to select aregion and systematically navigate through design examples for thatregion and selectively incorporating desirable designs identified by thedesigner into the UI design.

In order to provide the auto-complete suggestions for a UI design, theUI design application 115 generates a UI query that includes attributesof the existing UI components in the partially completed UI design. Theexisting UI components include the UI components added by the designerand the UI components suggested by the UI design application 115 andaccepted by the designer. The UI design application 115 submits the UIquery to the server 120 and receives a collection of design examplesfrom a corpus of UI designs, each of the received design examples fromthe corpus including UI components similar to the existing UIcomponents. The UI design application 115 fills the partially completedUI design using UI components in one of the received design examples,and enables the user to select regions in the resulting UI design andview alternative designs for the selected regions. The user can chooseto incorporate the suggested designs for one or more regions in the UIdesign by accepting (or confirming) the desired suggestions, or ignorethe auto-complete suggestions altogether and completing the UI designmanually. In one embodiment, the UI design application 115 ranks thesuggestions based on how many examples in the corpus exhibit similar UIdesign features.

The server 120 is a hardware device and/or software program configuredto communicate with the client 110 and the web server 130 through thenetwork 140. The server 120 creates a design example corpus byretrieving contents such as web pages hosted on the web server 130 andindexes the contents in an index against UI components included therein.The server 120 receives UI queries from the client 110 regarding UIdesigns and searches in the index for design examples containing UIcomponents similar (e.g., location, background color, and/or font) tothe existing UI components specified in the UI queries. The server 120scores each design example in the search results by calculating aminimum transformation cost for transforming the existing set of UIcomponents specified in the UI query into a corresponding set of UIcomponents in the design example, which may involve operations such asadding, deleting or geometrically transforming (translation and/orscaling) one or more UI components.

In one embodiment, the minimum transformation cost is a value betweenthe range of 0 and 1, with a small value indicating a high degree ofsimilarity (i.e., less transformation operations necessary) and a highvalue indicating a low degree of similarity. The server 120 removes thedesign examples with minimum transformation costs exceeding apredetermined threshold value from the search results, and returns theremaining design examples to the client 110. The web server 130 is ahardware device and/or software program configured to deliver contentssuch as web pages over the network 140. In an alternative embodiment, apre-selected number (N) of design examples are returned to the client110. The server 120 selects the N design examples with the lowestminimum transformation cost, i.e. those with the greatest degree ofsimilarity.

The network 140 is a system of interconnected computer networks that usestandard communications technologies and/or protocols to facilitate datatransmission among the computer networks. Thus, the network 140 caninclude links using technologies such as Ethernet, 802.11, worldwideinteroperability for microwave access (WiMAX), 3G, digital subscriberline (DSL), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), InfiniBand, PCI ExpressAdvanced Switching, etc. Similarly, the networking protocols used on thenetwork 140 can include multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), thetransmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), the UserDatagram Protocol (UDP), the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP), thesimple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), the file transfer protocol (FTP),etc. The data exchanged over the network 140 can be represented usingtechnologies and/or formats including the hypertext markup language(HTML), the extensible markup language (XML), JavaScript, VBScript,Flash, PDF, PostScript, etc. In addition, all or some of links can beencrypted using conventional encryption technologies such as securesockets layer (SSL), transport layer security (TLS), virtual privatenetworks (VPNs), Internet Protocol security (IPsec), etc. In someembodiments, the entities use custom and/or dedicated datacommunications technologies instead of, or in addition to, the onesdescribed above.

Computer Architecture

The entities shown in FIG. 1 are implemented using one or morecomputers. FIG. 2 is a high-level block diagram illustrating an examplecomputer 200. The computer 200 includes at least one processor 202coupled to a chipset 204. The chipset 204 includes a memory controllerhub 220 and an input/output (I/O) controller hub 222. A memory 206 and agraphics adapter 212 are coupled to the memory controller hub 220, and adisplay 218 is coupled to the graphics adapter 212. A storage device208, keyboard 210, pointing device 214, and network adapter 216 arecoupled to the I/O controller hub 222. Other embodiments of the computer200 have different architectures.

The storage device 208 is a non-transitory computer-readable storagemedium such as a hard drive, compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM),DVD, or a solid-state memory device. The memory 206 holds instructionsand data used by the processor 202. The pointing device 214 is a mouse,track ball, or other type of pointing device, and is used in combinationwith the keyboard 210 to input data into the computer system 200. Thegraphics adapter 212 displays images and other information on thedisplay 218. The network adapter 216 couples the computer system 200 toone or more computer networks.

The computer 200 is adapted to execute computer program modules forproviding functionality described herein. As used herein, the term“module” refers to computer program logic used to provide the specifiedfunctionality. Thus, a module can be implemented in hardware, firmware,and/or software. In one embodiment, program modules are stored on thestorage device 208, loaded into the memory 206, and executed by theprocessor 202.

The types of computers 200 used by the entities of FIG. 1 can varydepending upon the embodiment and the processing power required by theentity. For example, the server 120 might comprise multiple bladeservers working together to provide the functionality described herein.The computers 200 can lack some of the components described above, suchas keyboards 210, graphics adapters 212, and displays 218.

Example Architectural Overview if the UI Design Application

FIG. 3A is a high-level block diagram illustrating a detailed view ofmodules within the UI design application 115 according to oneembodiment. Some embodiments of the UI design application 115 havedifferent and/or other modules than the ones described herein.Similarly, the functions can be distributed among the modules inaccordance with other embodiments in a different manner than isdescribed here. As illustrated, the UI design application 115 includes aUI editing module 310, an auto-completion module 320, and a data store330.

The UI editing module 310 displays a window on a display of the client110. The window includes an editing window (also called a “canvas”, a“working area”) along with a component menu listing UI components thatthe user can add onto a UI design. The window also includes anauto-completion menu with commands for the user to accept or erase theauto-completion suggestions. An example window 500 is illustrated inFIG. 5A. As shown, the example window 500 includes a canvas 510, acomponent menu 530, and an auto-completion menu 520. The auto-completionmenu 520 includes a suggestion selection button 525, an erase button527, and a view button 529. The selection button 525 confirms thecurrently suggested design, making the suggested UI components part ofthe UI under development. The erase button 527 removes a suggesteddesign, resulting in another suggested design (if available) beingpresented. The view button causes the original design from the corpusthat the suggested design is based on to be displayed to the designer.In one embodiment, the UI components in the original design thatcorrespond to the existing UI components (and resulted to the designbeing suggested) and/or the UI components that are being recommended arevisually highlighted (e.g., by outlining them in green and redrespectively).

Referring back to FIG. 3A, the auto-completion module 320 automaticallycompletes a partially completed UI design created by the designer andenables the designer to selectively incorporate suggested designs intothe UI design. When the UI editing module 310 receives user inputscreating a partially completed UI design, the auto-completion module 320generates a UI query including attributes of existing UI components inthe partially completed UI design, transmits the UI query to the server120, and retrieves a set of design examples containing suggested designsfor completing the partially completed UI design from the server 120.The auto-completion module 320 selects a design example in the set andfills the partially completed UI design with UI components of theselected design example. In one embodiment, the auto-completion module320 analyzes the design examples and groups examples that aresubstantially similar, e.g., those that have the same UI componentsarranged in approximately the same layout. These groups of examples arethen ranked based on the number of examples included in each, and thehighest ranked group (e.g., the group comprising the greatest number ofdesign examples) is presented to the designer as a suggestion first,with lower ranked groups being presented if the designer rejects thefirst-presented suggestion.

FIG. 5B illustrates an automatically completed UI design. As shown, theexisting UI components and the suggested UI components are visuallydistinguishable: the existing UI components are in solid lines and thesuggested UI components are in dotted lines. Other methods of visuallydistinguishing existing and suggested UI components may be used.

In one embodiment, the UI components in the retrieved design examplesare grouped into different regions (e.g., regions 540 and 550 in FIG.5B), and the retrieved design examples are grouped (and/or sub-grouped)according to their design similarities in terms of attributes such aslayout, color, and font in these regions. FIG. 6 illustrates an exampleorganization of the retrieved design examples for one such region. Asshown, the design examples are grouped into different layout groups orclusters 610 according to their similarity in the layouts of UIcomponents contained in the region. Additional details about how thedesign examples are grouped into the layout groups are provided belowwith regard to the server 120. Within each layout group, the designexamples are further grouped into different background groups 620according to their similarities in the backgrounds (e.g., backgroundcolor) of said region. Within each background group, the design examplesare further grouped into different font groups 630 according to theirsimilarities in their text fonts (e.g., size, style) of said region.Each group (or subgroup) has one or more representative design examples640.

The auto-completion module 320 enables the designer to systematicallynavigate through the retrieved design examples according to theirgroupings by interacting with a vertical scrollbar (also called a“detail slider”) 560 and a horizontal scrollbar (also called an “exampleslider”) 570, as illustrated in FIG. 5C. The detail slider 560 can be infour detail levels: a layout level, a background level, a font level,and a semantic level. As illustrated in FIG. 5D, starting with thelayout level, the designer can scroll the example slider 570 to view therepresentative design examples of the different layout groups in theselected region. Once the designer finds a desirable layout, thedesigner scrolls the detail slider 560 to the background level, as shownin FIG. 5E. The designer then scrolls the example slider 570 to view therepresentative design examples of the different background groups in theselected layout group. Similarly, once the designer finds a desirablebackground, the designer scrolls the detail slider 560 to the fontlevel, as shown in FIG. 5F. The designer views the representative designexamples of the font groups in the selected background group and selectsone of the presented options. Finally, once the designer has found adesirable font, the designer scrolls the detail slider 560 to thesemantic level as shown in FIG. 5G. The designer views the individualdesign examples of the selected font group and selects a desirabledesign (layout, background, font, and/or semantic) to incorporate withthe partially completed UI design by selecting the suggest selectionbutton 525. Otherwise, if the designer is not interested in any of thesuggested designs, the designer can ignore the suggestions all togetherby selecting the erase button 527, and add UI components manuallythrough the component menu 530. The UI design application 115 can makefurther suggestions based on the designer's decision regarding theauto-complete suggestions.

The data store 330 stores data used by the UI design application 115.Examples of such data include information about the partially completedUI design (e.g., attributes of UI components included therein), the UIquery generated for the partially completed UI design, and the designexamples received for the generated UI query. The data store 330 may bea relational database or any other type of database, or an in-memorydata-structure.

Example Architectural Overview of the Server

FIG. 3B is a high-level block diagram illustrating a detailed view ofmodules within the server 120 according to one embodiment. Someembodiments of the server 120 have different and/or other modules thanthe ones described herein. Similarly, the functions can be distributedamong the modules in accordance with other embodiments in a differentmanner than is described here. In addition, each module in FIG. 3B maybe implemented by a set of computers operating in parallel to furtherimprove efficiency. As illustrated, the server 120 includes a crawlingmodule 350, an indexing module 360, a search engine module 370, agrouping module 380, and a data store 390.

The crawling module 350 creates a design example corpus by retrieving UIcontents such as web pages, desktop graphical UI, and ANDROID interfacedesigns. For example, the crawling module 350 visits the web server 130to systematically retrieve web pages hosted thereon. The crawling module350 analyzes the harvested design examples to identify UI componentsincluded therein and determine attributes of the identified UIcomponents. In one embodiment, the crawling module 350 analyzes thedesign examples based on the specific formats of the design examples.For example, for a web page in hypertext markup language (HTML), thecrawling module 350 analyzes the HTML code of the web page according tothe data structure and/or grammar of HTML to identify the UI componentsof the web page and their attributes. Additionally or alternatively, thecrawling module 350 may apply a computer vision-based approach toanalyze the UI components of each design example.

The indexing module 360 indexes the design examples retrieved by thecrawling module 350 using attributes of UI components included in thedesign examples. As described above, a design example includes one ormore UI components (e.g., regions, texts, images, and buttons), each ofwhich includes attributes (e.g., location, length, height, background,font, and layout) that collectively define the UI component in thedesign example it belongs to. For example, the background attribute isan integer that represents a color value or a texture identifier of thebackground of the associated UI component.

In one embodiment, instead of indexing all design examples retrieved bythe crawling module 350, the indexing module 360 only indexes a designexample if the design example is sufficiently different from any of thealready indexed design examples. In cases where a design example is notindexed due to a substantially similar example already having beenindexed, the indexing module 360 may increment a count associated withthe similar indexed example, thus keeping a record of how common thedesign is. In one embodiment, the a continuous variable is used for thecount and the contribution of any given example to the count is weightedby how closely the existing UI components in the incomplete UI designmatch with the corresponding components in the example design. Forexample, if the designer has placed 3 existing UI components, and afirst example design contains three identical corresponding UIcomponents, the contribution of the first example may be weighted with afactor of 1. In contrast, a second example design that includes twoidentical corresponding UI components, but lacks a UI componentcorresponding to the third existing UI component, may be weighted with afactor of 0.66.

The indexing module 360 measures the differences between a first designexample and a second design example by calculating (1) a minimumtransformation cost for transforming UI components in the first designexample into UI components in the second design example, (2) a minimumtransformation cost for transforming UI components in the second designexample into UI components in the first design example, and (3) acombination (e.g., average) of the two costs (also called the“combination score”). One example method to calculate the minimumtransformation cost is defined in the following equation:

Cost=w _(a)∥additions∥+w _(d)∥deletions∥+w _(g) geometricCost,

where w_(a) is the weight assigned for each addition operation,∥additions∥ is the total number of addition operations, w_(d) is theweight assigned for each deletion operation, ∥deletions∥ is the totalnumber of deletion operations, w_(g) is the weight assigned to thegeometric costs defined using the following equation:

geometricCost=w _(translation)Σdis+w _(scale)Σscaling.

where w_(translation) is the weight assigned for edits corresponding toeach edit distance dis, and w_(scale) is the weight assigned for eachscaling operation scaling. In the above example, the weights foraddition and deletion are different, and as a result the cost functionis not symmetric.

For example, if the combination scores for a design example against allindexed design example exceeds a predetermined threshold value, then theindexing module 360 considers the design example sufficientlydistinctive and indexes the design example; otherwise the design exampleis skipped and not indexed (and optionally, a count is incremented,indicating an additional instance of a substantially similar design wasidentified). In one example, the indexing module 360 simplifies contentsfrom the design example that are unrelated to the graphical design ofthe UI components (e.g., replacing the actual texts with phrases such as“text”, and replacing the actual images with blank images or images withphrases such as “image”) before indexing the resulting simplified designexamples.

The search engine module 370 receives UI queries from the client 110 andsearches for design examples in the indexing module 360. In oneembodiment, the search engine module 370 calculates a minimumtransformation cost for each indexed design example measuring thesimilarity between the layout of the UI components specified in the UIquery and the layout of the corresponding UI components in the designexamples, and retrieves design examples with minimum transformationcosts smaller than a predetermined threshold value as the search resultsfor the UI query. For example, the similarity of an example design canbe determined by calculating the Hausdorff distances between the UIcomponents in the query and corresponding UI components in the example.The Hungarian method is then used to find the optimal mapping, thusproviding an overall distance between the UI components in the query andthe corresponding UI components. The relevance of a particular exampledesign is, in some embodiments, estimated by applying a Gaussian densityfunction to the overall distance divided by the number of UI componentsincluded in the query.

In one embodiment, given a specific example design c_(i), and arectangular area of interest A, the search engine module 370 extracts aset of UI components e_(j) to recommend from the example such that thebounding box of e_(j) maximally matches A. The search engine module 270begins with an empty set as e_(j) and then repeats the followingprocess. The search engine module 370 searches in c_(i) for a UIcomponent that has not been added to e_(j) and maximally overlaps A, bycalculating the UI component's intersection with A, relative to itssize. If the overlap is over a threshold, and by adding it to e_(j), theHausdorff distance between the bounding box of e_(j) and A does notincrease significantly, the UI component is added to e_(j). If there areno more qualified UI components in c_(i) (e.g., if all UI componentshave been considered), the search engine module 270 returns e_(j) thathas been found, comprising all UI components that were successfullyadded. Note that e_(j) can be empty. The search engine module 270calculates an estimate for the relevance of the recommended set of UIcomponents e_(j) for the area of interest A by applying a Gaussiandensity function to the Hausdorff distance between the bounding box ofe_(j) and A.

The grouping module 380 groups the design examples in the search resultsfor common regions among the design examples. In one embodiment, thegrouping module 380 first calculates a combination score for each pairof design examples in the search results, and groups the design examplepairs with small combination scores (e.g., comparing to a predeterminedthreshold value) into a same layout group and separates the designexamples in pairs with high combination scores. Similarly, the groupingmodule 380 quantifies the differences of backgrounds (e.g., colordifferences) among design examples in a same layout group, and groupsthe design examples with similar backgrounds into same background groupswithin that layout group. Similarly, the grouping module 380 quantifiesthe differences of fonts (e.g., size, style) among design examples in asame background group, and groups the design examples with similar fontsinto same font groups within that background group. In some embodiments,the grouping module 380 considers the whole design example or a subsetof the UI components therein (e.g., the UI components from the examplethat are being recommended for inclusion in the incomplete UI design)when grouping the examples, depending on the embodiment. The groupingmodule 380 returns the grouped design examples and/or recommended UIcomponents to the client 110 as search results of the received UI query.

In another embodiment, where the indexing module 360 does not filter outsimilar designs at the indexing stage, the grouping module 380identifies groups of designs that represent a common overall designbased on pairs of designs in the group having combination scores lowerthan a threshold. Example designs may be limited to being in a singlegroup, or may be included in multiple groups, depending on the specificembodiment. The grouping module 380 produces a count of how many designsare in each group, which can be used to rank the groups by howfrequently the common overall design appears in the corpus.

The data store 390 stores data used by the server 120. Examples of suchdata include the design example corpus, the received UI queries, and thegrouped design examples in the search results. The data store 390 may bea relational database or any other type of database, or an in-memorydata-structure.

Overview of Methodology

FIG. 4 is a time sequence diagram illustrating a process 400 for the UIdesign application 115 to automatically generate a design for apartially completed UI design, according to one embodiment. Otherembodiments can perform the steps of the process 400 in differentorders. Moreover, other embodiments can include different and/oradditional steps than the ones described herein.

Initially, the server 120 retrieves 410 a large corpus of designexamples, for example, by crawling the web server 130 for web pageshosted thereon. The server 120 analyzes 415 the design examples in thecorpus to identify UI components included therein and determine theattributes of the identified UI components. The server 120 then indexes420 the design examples against their UI components in an index.

The UI design application 115 executing on the client 110 receives 425 auser input to create a UI design. The UI design application 115 mayreceive subsequent user inputs to add one or more UI components on tothe partially completed UI design (the existing UI components). Anexample partially completed UI design is illustrated in FIG. 5A.Referring again to FIG. 4, the UI design application 115 generates 430 aUI query with attributes of the existing UI components, and transmitsthe UI query to the server 120.

The server 120 receives the UI query and searches 435 in the index fordesign examples with UI components similar to the existing UI componentsspecified in the UI query. In one embodiment, the server 120 calculatesminimum transformation costs between such UI components, and includesdesign examples with costs less than a predetermined threshold value insearch results for the UI query. The server 120 groups (and/orsubgroups) 440 the design examples for designs of common regionsaccording to attributes such as layout, UI component type, background,and font, and transmits the grouped design examples to the UI designapplication 115. Alternatively, the server 120 may transmit an exemplarydesign from each group to the UI design application 115.

The UI design application 115 displays 445 the layout of arepresentative design example in one of the layout groups along with theexisting UI components to complete the UI design. One exemplaryauto-completed UI design is illustrated in FIG. 5B. Referring again toFIG. 4, the UI design application 115 receives 450 a user selection of aregion in the automatically completed UI design, and displays a set ofuser controls for selecting from the example designs, e.g., detailslider 560 and an example slider 570 presented next to the selectedregion, as illustrated in FIG. 5C. The UI design application 115 fills455 the selected regions with suggested displays based on userinteractions with the user controls. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 5C,the user can scroll the detail slider 560 to control the level of groups(e.g., layout groups, background groups, font groups) to view, andscroll the example slider 570 to navigate through the representativedesign examples.

In an alternative embodiment, the example designs are ranked and thedesigner is presented with a single scroll bar for navigating amongthem. The designer selects a region and is presented with the mosthighly ranked design example corresponding to the selected region. Thedesigner can use the scroll bar to navigate between options, which arearranged in rank order. Thus, the most popular designs in the corpus arepresented to the designer first, as they are more likely to be ofinterest, but more unusual designs are also presented, should thedesigner wish to make use of them. In other embodiments, different typesof user controls are provided to the designer for navigating through andselecting from the design example.

FIG. 5D illustrates the designer scrolling the example slider to viewsuggested layouts for the selected region, FIG. 5E illustrates thedesigner scrolling the example slider to view suggested backgrounds forthe selected region, FIG. 5F illustrates the designer scrolling theexample slider to view suggested fonts for the selected region, and FIG.5G illustrates the designer scrolling the example slider to view aspecific design example for the selected region.

Referring again to FIG. 4, the UI design application 115 receives 460 auser acceptance for a currently displayed design for the selectedregion, and adds 465 the design into the partially complete UI design.

FIG. 7 is a flow-chart illustrating a method 700 for completing a UIdesign, according to one embodiment. FIG. 7 attributes the steps of themethod 700 to the UI design application 115. However, some or all of thesteps may be performed by other entities. In addition, some embodimentsmay perform the steps in parallel, perform the steps in differentorders, or perform different steps.

Initially, in step 710, the UI design application 115 receives anincomplete UI that includes at least one designer added UI component.The incomplete UI is typically generated by the UI design application115 in response to user input by a designer. Alternatively, theincomplete UI design can be imported from an external source, forexample by loading the incomplete UI design from a local or remotestorage device 208.

At 720, the UI design application 115 identifies a plurality of exampleUI designs from a corpus of UI designs. In one embodiment, the UI designapplication 115 queries an indexed corpus of design examples using thedesigner added UI components in the incomplete UI as search terms. Thereturned example designs are those that include UI components that aresimilar to the designer added UI components, within a threshold degreeof tolerance. For example, the UI design application can calculate atransformation cost for the incomplete UI and the example design, asdescribed above with reference to FIGS. 1 and 3B, with only those designexamples with a transformation cost below a threshold value beingreturned in response to the query. In various embodiments, returnedexample designs can include all of the UI components present in theexample, or a subset thereof (e.g., the UI components in the examplethat correspond to the designer added UI components in the query may beomitted such that the example returned includes just components that areto be recommended for inclusion in the incomplete UI design).

At 730, the UI design application 115 places the identified exampledesigns into groups of similar example designs. The UI designapplication 115 compares example designs and groups them together ifthey are substantially similar, e.g., by calculating the transformationcost for a pair of examples and grouping the pair of the transformationcost is below a threshold. In one embodiment, each example design isplaced in a single group. In another embodiment, each example design maybe placed in multiple groups. For example, if example A is similar toexamples B and C, but the difference between B and C exceeds thethreshold, a first group containing A and B is created as well as asecond group containing A and C.

At 740, the UI design application 115 ranks the identified groups basedon the number of example designs included in each. In one embodiment,the groups are ranked in order of how many example designs are includedin each group. In another embodiment, the UI design application 115 alsoconsiders how closely the existing UI components in the incomplete UIdesign match with the corresponding components in the example designs inthe group (e.g., by considering the transformation scores associatedwith those components).

At 750, the UI design application 115 selects one of the example designsin each group as representative of the group. The representative exampledesign may be selected in any appropriate manner, such as selecting thedesign added to the group, selecting the design that yields the lowestaverage transformation score with respect to the other example designsin the group, selecting a design at random, and the like.

At 760, the UI design application 115 presents one or more of theselected representative example designs to the designer. In oneembodiment, the representative example from the highest ranked group ispresented first, with the second highest rank example presented if thedesigner rejects the first presented example (e.g., by pressing theerase button 527 shown in FIGS. 5A-5G). If the designer also rejects thesecond ranked example, the third ranked example is presented, and so on,until all examples have been presented or the designer selects one toinclude in the incomplete UI design. In other embodiments, the exampledesigns may be presented in different orders and/or multiple examplesmay be presented in unison.

At 770, the UI design application 115 receives a selection of one of thepresented example designs responsive to user input by the designer. Forexample, in the embodiment shown in FIGS. 5A-5G, the designer pressesthe select button 525 and the currently presented example design isselected. At 780, the selected example design is incorporated into theincomplete UI design. In one embodiment, the UI design application 115inserts all of the UI components into the selected design to theincomplete UI design, except those that correspond to the existingcomponents added to the incomplete UI by the designer (i.e., those thatresulted in the selected example design being identified). The added UIcomponents are placed in positions in the incomplete UI design thatcorrespond to their positions in the selected design example. This mayrequire that the UI design application 115 alters the position and/orsize of the added UI components, for example if the selected example islarger or smaller than the incomplete UI design.

Additional Considerations

Some portions of the above description describe the embodiments in termsof algorithmic processes or operations. These algorithmic descriptionsand representations are commonly used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to convey the substance of their work effectively toothers skilled in the art. These operations, while describedfunctionally, computationally, or logically, are understood to beimplemented by computer programs comprising instructions for executionby a processor or equivalent electrical circuits, microcode, or thelike. Furthermore, it has also proven convenient at times, to refer tothese arrangements of functional operations as modules, without loss ofgenerality. The described operations and their associated modules may beembodied in software, firmware, hardware, or any combinations thereof.

As used herein any reference to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment”means that a particular element, feature, structure, or characteristicdescribed in connection with the embodiment is included in at least oneembodiment. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in variousplaces in the specification are not necessarily all referring to thesame embodiment.

Some embodiments may be described using the expression “coupled” and“connected” along with their derivatives. It should be understood thatthese terms are not intended as synonyms for each other. For example,some embodiments may be described using the term “connected” to indicatethat two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contactwith each other. In another example, some embodiments may be describedusing the term “coupled” to indicate that two or more elements are indirect physical or electrical contact. The term “coupled,” however, mayalso mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with eachother, but yet still co-operate or interact with each other. Theembodiments are not limited in this context.

As used herein, the terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “includes,”“including,” “has,” “having” or any other variation thereof, areintended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion. For example, a process,method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements is notnecessarily limited to only those elements but may include otherelements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method,article, or apparatus. Further, unless expressly stated to the contrary,“or” refers to an inclusive or and not to an exclusive or. For example,a condition A or B is satisfied by any one of the following: A is true(or present) and B is false (or not present), A is false (or notpresent) and B is true (or present), and both A and B are true (orpresent).

In addition, use of the “a” or “an” are employed to describe elementsand components of the embodiments herein. This is done merely forconvenience and to give a general sense of the disclosure. Thisdescription should be read to include one or at least one and thesingular also includes the plural unless it is obvious that it is meantotherwise.

Upon reading this disclosure, those of skill in the art will appreciatestill additional alternative structural and functional designs for asystem and a process for identifying documents sharing common underlyingstructures in a large collection of documents and processing thedocuments using the identified structures. Thus, while particularembodiments and applications have been illustrated and described, it isto be understood that the present disclosure is not limited to theprecise construction and components disclosed herein and that variousmodifications, changes and variations which will be apparent to thoseskilled in the art may be made in the arrangement, operation and detailsof the method, system, and storage medium disclosed herein withoutdeparting from the spirit and scope of the invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method of assisting a userto create a user interface (UI), comprising: receiving an incomplete UIdesign, the incomplete UI design comprising a first set of one or moreexisting UI components; identifying a plurality of example designs, eachcomprising a second set of one or more corresponding UI components,similar to the first set, and one or more additional UI components,wherein identifying comprises calculating a transformation costassociated with each of the plurality of example designs; grouping theplurality of example designs into a plurality of groups based onsimilarities between the additional UI components thereof; ranking theplurality of groups based on a number of example designs therein;selecting, from each group, a representative example design; andproviding the representative example designs for presentation to theuser in an order based on the ranking, wherein presenting includesproviding user controls for the selection of a specific example designfor incorporation with the incomplete UI design.
 2. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the ranking for a groupis further based on the corresponding transformation costs associatedwith the example designs therein.
 3. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, wherein calculating the transformation cost associated with oneof the plurality of example designs comprises: calculating, for eachexisting UI component, a difference score indicating a degree ofdifference from a corresponding one of the corresponding UI componentsin the example design; and calculating the transformation cost based onthe difference scores.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3,wherein calculating the transformation cost associated with one of theplurality of example designs further comprises: calculating an additionscore associated with one of the existing UI components that is notfound in the example design, wherein the transformation cost is furtherbased on the addition score.
 5. The computer-implemented method of claim1, wherein grouping the plurality of example designs comprises:calculating, for a first example design, a degree of difference betweenthe additional UI components of the first example design and theadditional UI components of a second example design; and grouping thefirst and second example designs responsive to the degree of differencebeing less than a threshold.
 6. The computer-implemented method of claim1, wherein selecting a representative example design for a groupcomprises: calculating, for each example design in the group, a degreeof difference from other example designs in the group; producing, foreach example design, a total difference score based on the correspondingexample design's degrees of difference from other example designs in thegroup; and selecting an example design with a lowest total differencescore as the representative example design.
 7. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 1, further comprising: receiving an indication of anincomplete area within the incomplete UI design; and identifying, foreach example design, a corresponding area that corresponds to theincomplete area, wherein the additional UI components of each exampledesign are contained within the respective corresponding area.
 8. Anon-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable computerprogram code for assisting a user to create a UI, the computer programcode comprising instructions for: receiving an incomplete UI design, theincomplete UI design comprising a first set of one or more existing UIcomponents; identifying a plurality of example designs, each comprisinga second set of one or more corresponding UI components, similar to thefirst set, and one or more additional UI components, wherein identifyingcomprises calculating a transformation cost associated with each of theplurality of example designs; grouping the plurality of example designsinto a plurality of groups based on similarities between the additionalUI components thereof; ranking the plurality of groups based on a numberof example designs therein; selecting, from each group, a representativeexample design; and providing the representative example designs forpresentation to the user in an order based on the ranking, whereinpresenting includes providing user controls for the selection of aspecific example design for incorporation with the incomplete UI design.9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein theranking for a group is further based on the corresponding transformationcosts associated with the example designs therein.
 10. Thenon-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein calculatingthe transformation cost associated with one of the plurality of exampledesigns comprises: calculating, for each existing UI component, adifference score indicating a degree of difference from a correspondingone of the corresponding UI components in the example design; andcalculating the transformation cost based on the difference scores. 11.The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10, whereincalculating the transformation cost associated with one of the pluralityof example designs further comprises: calculating an addition scoreassociated with one of the existing UI components that is not found inthe example design, wherein the transformation cost is further based onthe addition score.
 12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium ofclaim 8, wherein grouping the plurality of example designs comprises:calculating, for a first example design, a degree of difference betweenthe additional UI components of the first example design and theadditional UI components of a second example design; and grouping thefirst and second example designs responsive to the degree of differencebeing less than a threshold.
 13. The non-transitory computer-readablemedium of claim 8, wherein selecting a representative example design fora group comprises: calculating, for each example design in the group, adegree of difference from other example designs in the group; producing,for each example design, a total difference score based on thecorresponding example design's degrees of difference from other exampledesigns in the group; and selecting an example design with a lowesttotal difference score as the representative example design.
 14. Thenon-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, further comprising:receiving an indication of an incomplete area within the incomplete UIdesign; and identifying, for each example design, a corresponding areathat corresponds to the incomplete area, wherein the additional UIcomponents of each example design are contained within the respectivecorresponding area.
 15. A system for assisting a user to complete anincomplete UI, comprising: a non-transitory computer-readable mediumstoring executable computer program code, the computer program codecomprising instructions for: sending, to a server, a query comprising afirst set of one or more existing UI components; receiving, from theserver, a plurality of suggested designs based on example designs in acorpus, each suggested design including one or more corresponding UIcomponents, similar to the existing UI components, and one or moreadditional UI components, the suggested designs ranked based on afrequency with which designs similar to the suggested designs appear inthe corpus; presenting a highest ranked suggested design to the user;and incorporating the additional components of the highest rankedsuggested design into the incomplete UI responsive to user inputindicating approval of the highest ranked suggested design; and aprocessor for executing the computer program code.
 16. The system ofclaim 15, wherein the computer program code further comprisesinstructions for: presenting a second highest ranked suggested design tothe user responsive to user input indicating rejection of the highestranked suggested design; and incorporating the additional components ofthe second highest ranked suggested design into the incomplete UIresponsive to user input indicating approval of the second highestranked suggested design.
 17. The system of claim 15, wherein thesuggested designs are ranked further responsive to a measure ofsimilarity between the existing UI components and the respectivecorresponding UI components.
 18. The system of claim 15, wherein thecorresponding UI components and additional UI components of eachsuggested design are taken from a corresponding one of the exampledesigns in the corpus.
 19. The system of claim 18, wherein the queryfurther comprises an indication of an area of interest, the additionalUI components of each suggested design being taken from a correspondingarea of the respective corresponding example design in the corpus. 20.The system of claim 18, wherein the computer program code furthercomprises instructions for: presenting the corresponding example designin the corpus for a currently displayed suggested design responsive touser input, the presenting comprising visually distinguishing componentsof the corresponding example design included in the suggested design asat least one of: corresponding UI components and additional UIcomponents.